The Free JD (Ep. 520)
Thinking LSAT
Nathan Fox and Ben Olson
4.6 • 886 Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2025
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ben and Nathan share strategies for using visualization to stay engaged in Reading Comprehension. They also explain that getting a full-ride to law school takes more than just a high LSAT score—your application timing, school choices, and willingness to walk away from weak offers all matter.
Watch Episode 520 on YouTube
0:28 – How Law Schools Guide Career Decisions
A Harvard alumnus describes losing his job in big law after publishing an op-ed criticizing the Trump administration. Nathan and Ben discuss how law schools recruit students under the banner of justice, but then steer them toward corporate law firms. The guys remind listeners: you can’t do public-interest work and make big-law money at the same time. Sending their students to big law is a choice that schools have a vested interest in.
9:27 – UC Law SF Sweatshirt Drive
Nathan shares an email from UC Law San Francisco (formerly Hastings) asking alums to buy sweatshirts for incoming 1Ls. He and Ben laugh at the school’s request for $40 sweatshirts while simultaneously charging students more than $50,000 in tuition per year.
21:16 – Visualizing Passages
Connor asks for advice on improving visualization skills in RC. Strong reading comprehension depends on pausing to visualize the text—especially when it’s abstract. Creating a mind map lets you evaluate each sentence and anticipate what’s coming next. If you’re not actively questioning and connecting ideas, you’re missing the forest for the trees.
34:01 – Proctor Troubles
Michael ran into issues with a proctor during his test and wonders if he should cancel his score. Ben and Nathan say there’s no advantage to canceling. The real question is whether his practice test results showed he was ready. Prepared students need not worry about minor test-day issues.
37:51 – Don’t Settle for Sub-Par
Mike has a 3.98 GPA and practice LSAT scores in the 170s. He’s considering applying in-state with a 166 but also wonders about his T-14 prospects. The guys advise Mike to take an additional gap year, score 170+, apply early, and secure scholarships at top schools, especially given his career aspirations.
44:17 – Conditional Full Ride
Theo adopted the motto of going to law school for free. After a gap year, he improved his LSAT, applied broadly, and accepted a full-ride scholarship to his top choice law school. The downside is that it’s a conditional scholarship. Nate encourages Theo to stick to his commitment not to pay for law school.
52:37 – Personal Statement Gong Show
Natalie is the next Gong Show contestant. In this segment, Ben and Nathan read your personal statement until they reach an unforgivable mistake—they then ring the gong. The record to beat is 34 lines, set by listener Sophia.
1:08:34 - Word of the Week - Waylay
I don’t want to waylay our meeting with this topic.
Get caught up with our Word of the Week library.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I committed to one of the full right offers. |
| 0:02.1 | The caveat is that it is conditional on maintaining a 2.9 GPA. |
| 0:06.5 | If they reduce or eliminate it, you should commit to yourself right now that you're going to |
| 0:10.3 | drop out of law school. |
| 0:18.4 | Hello and welcome to episode 520 of the Thinking ElSat podcast. |
| 0:21.6 | I'm Nathan Fox with me. |
| 0:22.6 | It's Ben Olson, we're the co-founders of ElSatDemon.com and the ElSat Demon Daily podcast. |
| 0:28.6 | We've got an agenda item here, Ben, that was sent in by you, Ben, from the Harvard Crimson, written by Ryan Powers, a Harvard Law School graduate. |
| 0:38.5 | The headline, I guess, is Harvard taught me to speak out. |
| 0:42.5 | Big law fired me when I did. |
| 0:46.6 | Yeah, I'm actually not as interested in the main storyline here, although I think we have talked about this before and people should know |
| 0:55.0 | when you're working for a big law firm or any law firm, you need to be mindful of what you |
| 1:02.0 | talk about publicly and not be surprised when they ask you to stop being overly political |
| 1:08.3 | and also not be surprised if they eventually let you go, especially when you don't do what they ask. |
| 1:14.9 | But what was more interesting to me was the fact that this student was talking a lot about what law schools and Harvard in particular do with their students when it comes to |
| 1:29.4 | guiding their career decisions, right? There is this, hey, come do justice. Come fight the good fight at Harvard. |
| 1:40.3 | But as this student points out, or this, I guess this attorney now or this fired attorney or this one previously an attorney at a big law firm is saying, yeah, but once you actually get there, Harvard is going to try to push you in many different ways to go into big law. |
| 1:58.0 | Yeah, totally. |
| 1:59.5 | So the article starts off. I guess there's three bullet points here. |
| 2:03.2 | Should we read them? Sure. First one is, quote from the article, quote from this, I guess, |
| 2:09.5 | Ryan Powers. Last month, I was fired from my corporate law job, my offense, an article on the |
| 2:15.6 | Trump administration's threats to democracy. I went to Harvard |
... |
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